Land art
Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s,[1] largely associated with Great Britain and the United States[2][3][4] but that also includes examples from many countries. As a trend, "land art" expanded boundaries of art by the materials used and the siting of the works. The materials used were often the materials of the Earth, including the soil, rocks, vegetation, and water found on-site, and the sites of the works were often distant from population centers. Though sometimes fairly inaccessible, photo documentation was commonly brought back to the urban art gallery.[3][5][6]
Concerns of the art movement centered around rejection of the commercialization of art-making and enthusiasm with an emergent ecological movement. The art movement coincided with the popularity of the rejection of urban living and its counterpart, an enthusiasm for that which is rural. Included in these inclinations were spiritual yearnings concerning the planet Earth as home to humanity.[7][8]
Form
The art form gained traction in the 1960s and 1970s as land art was not something that could easily be turned into a commodity, unlike the "mass produced cultural debris" of the time.[2] During this period, proponents of land art rejected the museum or gallery as the setting of artistic activity and developed monumental landscape projects which were beyond the reach of traditional transportable sculpture and the commercial art market, although photographic documentation was often presented in normal gallery spaces. Land art was inspired by minimal art and conceptual art but also by modern movements such as De Stijl, Cubism, minimalism and the work of Constantin Brâncuși and Joseph Beuys.[9] One of the first earthworks artists was Herbert Bayer, who created Grass Mound in Aspen, Colorado, in 1955.[10][2]
Many of the artists associated with land art had been involved with minimal art and conceptual art. Isamu Noguchi's 1941 design for Contoured Playground in New York City is sometimes interpreted as an important early piece of land art even though the artist himself never called his work "land art" but simply "sculpture". His influence on contemporary land art, landscape architecture and environmental sculpture is evident in many works today.[9]
One example of land art in the 20th century was a group exhibition called "Earthworks" created in 1968 at the Dwan Gallery in New York.
Perhaps the best known artist who worked in this genre was Robert Smithson whose 1968 essay "The Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects" provided a critical framework for the movement as a reaction to the disengagement of Modernism from social issues as represented by the critic Clement Greenberg.[13] His best known piece, and probably the most famous piece of all land art, is the Spiral Jetty (1970), for which Smithson arranged rock, earth and algae so as to form a long (1500 ft) spiral-shape jetty protruding into Great Salt Lake in northern Utah, U.S. How much of the work, if any, is visible is dependent on the fluctuating water levels. Since its creation, the work has been completely covered, and then uncovered again, by water. A steward of the artwork in conjunction with the Dia Foundation,[14] the Utah Museum of Fine Arts regularly curates programming around the Spiral Jetty, including a "Family Backpacks" program.[15]
Smithson's Gravel Mirror with Cracks and Dust (1968) is an example of land art existing in a gallery space rather than in the natural environment. It consists of a pile of gravel by the side of a partially mirrored gallery wall. In its simplicity of form and concentration on the materials themselves, this and other pieces of land art have an affinity with minimalism. There is also a relationship to Arte Povera in the use of materials traditionally considered "unartistic" or "worthless". The Italian Germano Celant, founder of Arte Povera, was one of the first curators to promote land art.[16]
"Land artists" have tended to be American,
Some projects by the artists
Land artists in America relied mostly on wealthy
Michael Heizer in 2022 completed his work on City, and James Turrell continues to work on the Roden Crater project. In most respects, "land art" has become part of mainstream public art and in many cases the term "land art" is misused to label any kind of art in nature even though conceptually not related to the avant-garde works by the pioneers of land art.
The Earth art of the 1960s were sometimes reminiscent of much older land works, such as
Contemporary land artists
- Lita Albuquerque (born 1946)
- Betty Beaumont (born 1946)
- Milton Becerra (born 1951)
- Marinus Boezem (born 1934)
- Chris Booth (born 1948)
- Eberhard Bosslet (born 1953)
- Alberto Burri (1915–1995)
- Mel Chin (born 1951)
- Christo and Jeanne ClaudeChristo (1935–2020) Jeanne (1935–2009)
- Walter De Maria (1935–2013)
- Lucien den Arend (born 1943)
- Agnes Denes (born 1938)
- Jan Dibbets (born 1941)
- Harvey Fite (1903–1976)
- Barry Flanagan (1941–2009)
- Hamish Fulton (born 1946)
- Andy Goldsworthy (born 1956)
- Michael Heizer (born 1944)
- Stan Herd (born 1950)
- Nancy Holt (1938–2014)
- Peter Hutchinson (born 1930)
- Junichi Kakizaki (born 1971)
- Dani Karavan (1930–2021)
- Maya Lin (born 1959)
- Richard Long (born 1945)
- Robert Morris (1931–2018)
- Vik Muniz (born 1961)
- David Nash(born 1945)
- Ugo Rondinone (born 1964)
- Dennis Oppenheim (1938–2011)
- Georgia Papageorge (born 1941)
- Beverly Pepper (1922–2020)
- Tanya Preminger (born 1944)
- Andrew Rogers(born 1947)
- Charles Ross (born 1937)
- Richard Shilling (born 1973)
- Nobuo Sekine (1942–2019)
- Robert Smithson (1938–1973)
- Alan Sonfist (born 1946)
- Tang Da Wu (born 1943)
- James Turrell (born 1943)
- Jacek Tylicki (born 1951)
- Nils Udo(born 1937)
- Bill Vazan (born 1933)
- Strijdom van der Merwe (born 1961)
See also
- Ecofeminist art
- Ecological art
- Ecovention
- Environmental art
- Environmental sculpture
- Hill figure
- Land Arts of the American West
- Petroglyph
- Rock art
- Independent public art
- Site-specific art
- Tree Shaping
References
Notes
- ^ "Land art – Art Term". Tate.
- ^ ISBN 9780714856438– via Google Books.
- ^ ISBN 978-0810941724
- ^ "Earth Art Movement Overview". The Art Story.
- ^ http://mymodernmet.com Unexpected Land Art Beautifully Formed in Nature.
- ^ http://www.land-arts.com Land art.
- ISBN 978-0-78921-150-7
- ^ a b "Land Art: Earthworks that Defined Postwar American Art". Art & Antiques Magazine. April 4, 2012. Archived from the original on March 27, 2018. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
- ^ ISBN 3-7643-6119-0
- ^ "Grass Mound | AspenModern". Retrieved 2024-05-04.
- ^ Glueck, Grace (15 October 1967). "Roland Penrose, Picasso Persuader". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
- ^ "Leftmatrix". leftmatrix.com. Archived from the original on January 7, 2011. Retrieved February 8, 2011.
- ISBN 0719044693
- ^ Arts, Utah Museum of Fine. "UMFA: Utah Museum of Fine Arts". Archived from the original on 2016-10-18. Retrieved 2016-09-15.
- ^ "Family Backpacks Archived 2016-10-18 at the Wayback Machine". Utah Museum of Fine Arts. umfa.utah.org. July 30, 2017.
- ^ "Observatoire du Land Art". obsart.blogspot.fr. 24 May 2012. Retrieved June 2, 2012.
- ^ "Monumental Land Art of the United States". seeleyart.com. Retrieved August 22, 2023.
- ^ Christo; Jeanne-Claude. "Common Errors". Christojeanneclaude.net. Archived from the original on 2003-02-08. Retrieved 2008-11-07.
- ^ Hass, Nancy. "What Happens When a Single Art Project Becomes a Decades-Long Obsession?," The New York Times, September 18, 2018. Retrieved January 27, 2022.
- ^ Beachy-Quick, Dan. "Cosmic Dancer: Dan Beachy-Quick on Charles Ross’s Star Axis," Artforum, October 28, 2021. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
Further reading
- Lawrence Alloway, Wolfgang Becker, Robert Rosenblum et al., Alan Sonfist, Nature: The End of Art, Gli Ori, Dist. Thames & Hudson Florence, Italy,2004 ISBN 0-615-12533-6
- Max Andrews (Ed.): Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook. London 2006 ISBN 978-0-901469-57-1
- John Beardsley: Earthworks and Beyond. Contemporary Art in the Landscape. New York 1998 ISBN 0-7892-0296-4
- Suzaan Boettger, Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties. University of California Press 2002. ISBN 0-520-24116-9
- Amy Dempsey: Destination Art. Berkeley CA 2006 ISBN 9780520250253
- Michel Draguet, Nils-Udo, Bob Verschueren, Bruseels: Atelier 340, 1992
- Larisa Dryansky, ""Cartophotographies : de l'art conceptuel au Land Art"", Paris, éditions du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques-Institut national d'histoire de l'art, 2017.
- Jack Flam (Ed.). Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Berkeley CA 1996 ISBN 0-520-20385-2
- John K. Grande: New York, London. Balance: Art and Nature, Black Rose Books, 1994, 2003 ISBN 1-55164-234-4
- John K. Grande, Edward Lucie-Smith (Intro): Art Nature Dialogues: Interviews with Environmental Artists, New York 2004 ISBN 978-0-7914-6194-5
- John K. Grande, ISBN 978-88-901960-7-2
- Eleanor Heartney, Andrew Rogers Geoglyphs, Rhythms of Life, Edizioni Charta srl, Italy, 2009 ISBN 978-88-8158-712-4
- Robert Hobbs, Robert Smithson: A Retrospective View, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg / Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University,
- Jeffrey Kastner, Brian Wallis: Land and Environmental Art. Boston 1998 ISBN 0-7148-4519-1
- Lucy R Lippard: Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory. New York 1983 ISBN 978-0-394-51812-1
- Alessandro Rocca: Natural Architecture. New York (2007) ISBN 1568987218
- Chris Taylor and Bill Gilbert. Land Arts of the American West. Austin: University of Texas Press; 2009. ISBN 978-0-292-71672-8
- Gilles A. Tiberghien: Land Art. Ed. Carré 1993/1995/2012
- ISBN 3-7643-6119-0
External links
- Artist in Nature International Network
- Denarend.com - About land art
- Land Arts of the American West
- Official UNM Land Arts of the American West Program Website
- Roden Crater by James Turrell
- Broken Circle
- OBSART | Observatoire du Land Art
- (in German) Using land art as a form of advertising
- Center for Land Use Interpretation entry for Land Art
- The Case for Land Art | The Art Assignment | PBS